AWI Quarterly » 2011 Spring

"The Animal Welfare Institute has been established by a group of persons interested in the humane treatment of all animals." Those were the first words to grace Vol. 1 No. 1 of AWI’s Information Report - a publication launched in 1951 to announce the organization’s formation and report on its efforts to improve animal welfare.

"The most horrible sound you’ll ever hear." That’s how Kristi Gatt described the howl of pain and terror her dog made when a steel-jaw leghold trap clamped down on her paw in North Carolina’s Croatan National Forest.

It’s happened yet again, just as we predicted. Another USDA-licensed Class B dealer operation has been indicted by the federal government following a two-year investigation into purported illegal activities.

An unusually large number of young bottlenose dolphins have stranded along shores of the Gulf of Mexico in recent months, and last April’s catastrophic blowout of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig is being eyed as the culprit.

On March 11, AWI Senior Federal Policy Advisor Nancy Blaney testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in favor of continued funding for the Department of Justice’s National Animal Cruelty and Animal Fighting Initiative.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) - citing grave concern over the devastating effect white-nose syndrome (WNS) has had on hibernating bats in New Jersey and across the U.S. - introduced S. 357, the Wildlife Disease Emergency Act, on February 15.

The fight to extend or deny protections for animals takes place in state capitals as well as on Capitol Hill. The high-profile confrontation this year is in Missouri - again. Last year, Missouri voters approved Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, a ballot initiative addressing the most egregious cruelties of that state’s puppy mill industry.

A lot of pigs live in Duplin County, North Carolina - nearly 2.3 million according to the USDA’s 2007 Census of Agriculture, more than any other county in the U.S. (and more than the entire pig population of most states).

Industrial chicken farming - whether for meat or egg production - is notoriously inhumane. Chickens raised for meat live in crowded, windowless barns, induced into a state of semi-torpor, while those raised to lay eggs are stuffed into cramped cages, existing under conditions so stressful they have their beaks mutilated to prevent pecking each other to death.